ResLife Hosts New Women’s Event Grow And Glow

Grow and Glow — a new women’s event hosted by Union University’s Residence Life — was held in the Bowld on Thursday, March 27, at 8 p.m. It replaced the annual event Sit Down with Your Sister and focused on self-care and how to incorporate it into life after college.

The night began with Marisa Infield, residence director for the Heritage Complex, sharing her experiences with self-care after college, and transitioned into breakout sessions that taught the basics of three self-care hobbies. Mary Milton gave a brief introduction to scrapbooking, Esther Noeth and Jenny Link guided poetry writing and Allie Housman led yoga.

“Everyone that’s leading an activity is sharing a little bit about how that activity helped them,” Infield said. “I’d love for people to pick up one of [the activities], but I think more than that, I just want people to start thinking about, ‘What is something that I love, and how can that bring God glory and allow me to rest?’”

Infield connected the idea of self-care to the idea of the Sabbath during her talk.

“My hope tonight is that people hear a little bit of my story and the failures in that and start to kind of redefine self-care as not just doing things you like, but doing things that you would like to see God’s goodness and glory in,” Infield said. “It is so easy to get this idea that your work supplies your existence instead of seeing that the Lord supplies your existence. And I think the idea of Sabbath is when you take the time to pause and rest, we see we’re not driving any of the works we’re doing, but it’s Christ that powers us to do that.”

Kami Haas, residence assistant of Grace 3 and a senior majoring in conservation biology, has been feeling the need for better rest practices as graduation approaches, and this event provided a great opportunity to learn some new self-care hobbies.

“I think that it’s a really good reminder about self-care because I tend to think about it in the same way, like if I’m caring for myself, it’s being selfish, but it really isn’t true at all, because you can’t pour from an empty cup,” Haas said. “I think that’s so important to realize after college because our routines are going to change so much, and it’s really important to have some rhythm of self-care. Sabbath is a really good way to think about self-care, and it is such a lost discipline in our society, so I feel like that is something I really want to implement more.”

Infield is passionate about preparing students for college and life after graduation, and she believes a great way to do that is by teaching them the power of self-care and rest.

“Rest is one of our strongest weapons against the enemy because when we rest, we see that our work is not of ourselves, our existence is not of ourselves, none of that do we supply, but Christ supplies that in us,” Infield said.